Sara and I went to Prism last night for their last night. As per tradition I got crunk and then we went to Burrito Drive afterwards. I think I managed to not do anything too stupid other than getting crunk in the first place. When we got home I crashed on the bed for like 6 hours before finally giving Yoru her evening pills. I had a few dreams that all included me drinking lots of water.

In one I was watching some show or playing a video game (there was an implied large-ish channel-space that I was exploring, and had settled on this one knowing that I could spend hours flipping through and this one was good enough). In the game I was exploring a park while simultaneously being narrated to about how much it sucks when roads get moved around, because every time it happens a bunch of old trees get chopped down that will take hundreds of years to regrow. In the virtual park there were a lot of small and medium-sized trees, but just a few original/old growth ones, which were absolutely huge, like the size of skyscrapers.

I moved on from the park and later ended up in a boat in shallow water near a couple of islands with Sara. It was dark except for frequent lightning flashes in the distance. The island that we had come from was larger and had a lot of people still on it, but was an active volcano. So we were seeking shelter on the seond island. It was very pebbley. And it wasn't clear that we'd find a good spot to stay. Ideally a cave or something. Most of our inventory was in a red sack with gold trimp that we'd left in the water. I went over to see what we had but I was having trouble opening it. Do I right click on it? Left click? Long click? I didn't want to accidentally destroy it or throw it into deeper water.

We kept paddling around, somewhat worried about the volcano and the lightning. We passed close to the first island again, where there were a bunch of people wearing random outfits and walking around apparently aimlessly, like they didn't really know how to play this game, either. I wondered if they were going to get buried in lava.

At this point we had a union pitcher with some fresh water in it that I wanted to drink. I also wanted to use the pitcher to pick up some pebbles from the bottom of the water (which was clear and only a few inches deep close to the islands). But that would get the water dirty. Hmmmm.

We went back to our peeble island and explored a bit. Near the center of the island I had found a bedroom. Originally it was just a corner of a bedroom, sort of carved into or built up against a couple of large rocks to shelter it, but when I visited again later, aiming to set up camp there, it got more and more fancy. It became part of a larger building with electricity and plumbing, and big glass windows, and other people walking around. I hoped they didn't mind that we were staying there for the night.

Then there was this part about the gas station on the corner of Whitney Way and Odana. I liked to go there and drink out of their hose. Or sometimes I'd fill my union pitcher with milk and drink that. But some rich person had bought the property and was tearing it down to build a mansion for themselves. I was somewhat upset about that.

I woke up for a bit and maybe pilled the cat or something. But it's Sunday and I didn't have to go anywhere so I eventually went back to sleep.

I was playing an RTS, but also doing something else, so sometimes I'd look at the game and see that my dudes were being attacked. My dudes being these awesome lizard people, and the attacks being shown by their symbol on the map (which was a horizontal oval with an X in the middle, as if "⦻" got squished between the floor and ceiling) turning from black to flashing red. It was a huge world we were in, divided into regions that we thought of like states or counties. Most of the time there wasn't much interaction with enemies.

Anyway, when I noticed that happening I would click on the flashing marker to zoom in, at which point I could see my dudes looking awesomely reptiley and, if I bothered to oversee them at all, generally whooping the butts of whomever tried to mess with them. They would get into a formation where they spaced themselves apart and fought with wooden poles with small axes or daggers attached to the ends. It was hard for enemies to get near them.

But other times I would end up having one guy kind of wandering off by himself, and he'd get killed. And then I'd feel bad.

The thing that was occupying me in the meantime was that I had been offered a job at the gridbeam company. Like they had an office and stuff. I had sort of started working there, but was simultaneously still working at JHT, which got me thinking at one point if I really wanted to leave that already. The Gridbeam job didn't pay a lot, but I got to do 'R&D', which included horsing around with new configurations, which is exactly what I always wanted to do. But I worried that this could end up like Factorio, where due to lack of direction I get all anxious/alienated/depressed. (Though to be fair, at JHT I only talk to Kong about once daily, which is the bulk of my interaction with other people, and yet that little bit of interaction, combined with a reliable salary and hours and getting to use the gym every day, has so far kept me more sane than I was when freelancing. So maybe working with the Gridbeam guys would be fine as long as some of those elements remained in effect.)

Out the back door of the gidbeam office was a frozen pond. Or at least partly frozen, so that it was slushy. Fizz had scattered a lot of birdseed on it, and the birdseed/slush combination was firm enough to walk on. At least if you walked slowly, with care, and for not very long. There was a red coat around the corner of the building that I could not quite reach, but that I thought was one of Rhoda's kids'.

Though I failed to fetch the coat, I did open a new can of Killz Mold-Killing Primer, which was the reason I stepped out back in the first place.

The one other part of the dream that I remember was driving on some country roads with Sara. It seemed to be somewhere south of Madison, but it was if we lived out in the country a bit. Maybe we were on our way to the grocery store. We came to a stop sign at a T. To the left was another T, pointing the other way (the stem of the T continuing in the same direction that we were going). There was a big tanker truck coming around the corner, so we were waiting for it. It seemed to be summer.

Fizz says:

I was going to a class in some kind of college auditorium room, and up in the front were some refreshments which you could pour out of containers, and the containers were all wobbly because Russ was providing them and they were dumpster-dived. Then I think people in the class were being rude to the teacher or something or maybe not, I forget. Anyway, a big section of the seats started going up like an elevator, maybe as punishment, or for some other reason. But it went really high, and then tipped over and we were all about to die, and I woke up. I think that's the first time I've woken up on purpose in a really long time.

This stool-construction video makes me want a better stapler.